Gratitude & Joy As An Act Of Resistance - A Thanksgiving Post
Thanksgiving In Gratitude Concert
This week I decided to check in with standard cable news. If you have be reading my Substack offerings you know that I endeavor to stay responsibly informed, but limit my standard commercial news encounters. This is what happened. Upon opening up the screen I was immediately hit with an image that made me sit down, close the screen and take long deep breaths. How abruptly and carelessly info-entertainment tosses out images of bewildering cruelty, scenes uploaded into the info-ether to be branded into our mind’s eye and dropped into our heart’s open spaces. I will not describe the image I saw, it is enough to say that it has haunted me for days. Yesterday that one image returned like a wave as I was walking my dogs in the woods and I found myself standing among the fallen leaves wiping my eyes and saying an ardent prayer for every soft and tender thing of this wondrous and wounded world. Eventually I went on, but the image and the prayer have stayed with me.
I don’t believe our hearts and souls were actually designed to take in this much suffering at such a bewildering speed. We are not fully equipped to accept daily violence as run of the mill, same old same old, with a resigned and deadened casualness. I’m not a research psychologist who studies the human psyche, I am just a songwriter and poet. But what I believe I am encountering is a movement in media that turns a profit by selling us fear and secondary trauma. Because there are currently no guardrails on this kind of media, I must choose to guard my tender heart, to keep it safe in a way that makes sure that cruelty is never normalized, in a manner that allows me keep an open heart and continue to live with real compassion.
Part of that care and protective nurture of the heart is to lean into what is still beautiful as I find it each day. Living well with gratitude and joy is an act of resistance, a claiming and affirmation of all that is still good and still true. Remembering what we love and what still shines is a counter-balance to a culture of endless doom scrolling. Gratitude lifts up what inspires and sustains us even in troubled times. Time with trusted community is a sanctuary of rest that rebuilds and renews our courage and hope. Laughter is a balm that soothes what hurts and heals what is aching.
So, in this season of Thanksgiving I am leaning into beauty, holding close what I love. I am sensing the threads of Mercy that still hold the world together, grateful for the golden woods, for the song I started this morning, for a walk with a good friend, for an afternoon planting garlic at Marcia’s farm. I am grateful to be gathering with family, for the good health of many I love and for hopeful medical treatment for those navigating illness. I am grateful for every soft and tender thing, for the god of small birds who watches over them as they fly and takes them into it’s endless heart when they fall.
And beloved, I am grateful for you and this gathering of spirits community, for all the good hearts and spirits you bring to this welcoming table.
Let us all, in this time of gratitude, stay open hearted as we can, love because it matters, lean into joy and what is still beautiful, right and true.
And in the words of the author and mystic Brian Doyle…And so, Amen.
Carrie
Question
I read somewhere that constant worry may not be the most sustainable form of activism. It was said a bit tongue in cheek, but it put its finger on something true. So my question today is about the idea of living well, finding joy and experiencing gratitude as an act of resistance to what pushes back and pushes us down. What do you think of this idea? What helps you maintain a sense of well being, sustains the work you do in daily ways for a kinder world?
Three Gratitudes
This is a video from my appearance on Krista Tippet’s On Being reading my poem “Three Gratitudes”
Just a Reminder - Thanksgiving Supporting Subscriber Gift Concert.
In November & December I am offering 2 very special In Gratitude Supporting Subscriber Events!
On November 24, 2023 I’ll be posting a new full concert on Vimeo, A Great Wild Mercy Live Release Concert - Carrie Newcomer with Gary Walters, Allie Summers & String Quartet. Join us for this beautiful string quartet presentation of new and favorite songs, filmed at the Buskirk Chumley Theater in front of a live audience. I so enjoyed this concert, showcasing string arrangements by Gary Walters. It was an evening of gratitude and it felt appropriate to premier it on A Gathering Of Spirits on Thanksgiving Day! If you miss the showing on Thanksgiving Day the link will be archived through February 28th so you can watch the full concert whenever you want.
I’ll be sending the private access VIMEO link to all supporting subscribers on Nov. 23rd!
Sunday, December 3, 2023 6PM CT (7PM ET, 5PM MT, 4PM PT) I’ll be co-hosting an hour long live conversation with Phyllis Cole-Dai (author, poet and host of The Raft “Living From Our Yes: A Conversation About Creativity, Gratitude & Community” Join Phyllis Cole-Dai and Carrie Newcomer for a live Zoom event about “living from our yes”. Together we will muse on the process of translating lived experience into a creative medium and embracing the entirety of life as a creative practice. By leaning into our lives with affirmation, gratitude and wonder, we build connections within ourselves.
All supporting subscribers will be sent a private Zoom link on December 2nd to all supporting subscribers!
There are a couple of things that I include in my morning meditation. One is: “That I might be emptied of yesterday, so that today can be filled with love and service and gratitude.” The other is: “As I approach this day, may I keep curious, open to wonder, and aware of grace.”
Thank you! I've been doing the same with the news - slower ingestion in bits and pieces, more written than visual, with time for reflection and thought. I share your concern that we humans aren't "wired" for the kind of encounters we are now exposed to via social media and cable news. The suffering is real. And our prayers and compassion must be urgent. But it is increasingly obvious that we are creating more violence - to our own souls and to other people - implicit to constant exposure to the violence of our technologies. This isn't about privilege; rather, it is about sustaining ourselves over the long haul to embody and practice love and justice.